Being a caretaker for elderly or sick patients, especially ones with Alzheimer’s, can be extraordinarily difficult emotionally and mentally. However, being able to empathize with patients is essential and Embodied Labs has created an immersive VR experience that puts caregivers into the body and mind of those who are dealing with aging issues and cognitive decline. Embodied Labs mission is to enhance care and improve training to retain great caretakers.
LA TechWatch sat down with CEO and Cofounder Carrie Shaw to learn more about her inspiration, the long-term vision for Embodied Labs, the company’s recent funding round.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised seed funding of $3.2M led by top age-tech investor, Ziegler Link·Age Fund, co-led by the leading immersive tech investor, The Venture Reality Fund, as well as SustainVC, a social and environmentally-focused impact fund, WXR Fund, investing in women and the next wave of computing, and ETF@JFFLabs, a social impact fund that invests in technologies that close skill gaps and improve economic mobility.
Tell us about the product or service Embodied Labs offers.
Embodied Labs uses the immersive experience of virtual reality (VR) to put health care professionals and family caregivers into the body and mind of those who are challenged with lifespan aging issues – cognitive decline such as Alzheimer’s, age-related vision and hearing loss, neurodegenerative disease such as Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia, and end-of-life decisions. Our mission at Embodied Labs is to enhance person-centered care through intellectual and instinctual behavior change and help long-term care providers recruit, train, and retain a quality caregiver workforce.
What inspired the start of Embodied Labs?
When I became a family caregiver at the age of 19, I realized how impactful perspective-taking and shared experiences could be in improving how we provided care for my mom living with Early Alzheimer’s disease. When I was introduced to virtual reality, I immediately envisioned this tool as the perfect medium to expand on the use of powerful perspective-taking in care teams working with other age-related conditions and enable a much-needed transformation of how health and aging care workforces receive training.
How is Embodied Labs different?
What Embodied Labs offers is an immersive training platform for caregivers of older adults that leverages experiential learning and surpasses the level of retention and engagement in traditional, passive lecture models. We aim to equip caregivers with immersive wellness and educational tools that the insurance industry, employee benefits providers, and aging services organizations are recognizing as a solution that will result in massive cost savings.
What market are you targeting and how big is it?
Age-tech is projected to have a total addressable market of $84B by 2030 according to a 2019 AARP study. Immersive technology, specifically, is growing at a rapid pace and, according to a 2016 report by Goldman Sachs, healthcare alone will cover 14.6 percent of an estimated $35B AR/VR software market by 2025. As today’s population continues to age, there is an increasing demand for more skilled employees in the aging care workforce. These forces include, but are not limited to, long-term care (senior living, home care, adult day, aging organizations), product and service companies that serve older adults, government agencies (city, county offices), medical and nursing schools as well as other academic institutions that engage with older adults, and acute care (hospitals, physicians groups).
How long do you think it will take for this to be a common and wide-spread solution?
Training through immersive learning environments will become the gold standard as the technology becomes ubiquitous over the next 3-5 years. We envision our solution to spread quickly with the growing need to solve talent acquisition and retention issues in the long-term care industry, as well as and the fast-approaching, mass-adoption of virtual reality technology.
What’s your business model?
We are a B2B Software as a Service Company offering immersive educational training solutions to communities that serve older adults. For companies that need the hardware too, we offer a hardware/software bundle.
What was the funding process like?
The fundraising process was a time for continuous personal and professional growth and was the opportunity to enable my greatest vision for Embodied Labs.
The process was more challenging than I expected. It was as equally eye-opening as my 2-year Peace Corps service and required a similar amount of grit that it took to be a family caregiver for my mom for the 12 years she lived with Early Alzheimer’s disease.
It was as equally eye-opening as my 2-year Peace Corps service and required a similar amount of grit that it took to be a family caregiver for my mom for the 12 years she lived with Early Alzheimer’s disease.
Constantly pitching to investors forced me to examine my weaknesses and admit them, put my ego aside and ask for help to keep moving forward and deal with constant rejection productively, rather than taking it personally.
Meeting my goal of raising 3.2M ultimately was empowering, both in showing myself that I could accomplish what I set out to do as well as enabling Embodied Labs to grow to its fullest potential.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
My top challenges I had to overcome were…
- The battle against the clock vs runway
- Grit to keep on going, even when I wanted to hide under a rock, scream, or have a long cry
- Finding the art and science of what it means to be judiciously scrappy
- Maintaining my founder vision amidst everyone else’s feedback
…in order to enable:
Building relationships to form the right network of people to make introductions to the right investors at the right time.
Overcoming the chickens and eggs of constantly needing to have something complete that requires time and money to get it done.
Remaining confident in my vision and approach to building the company, but also making the space to put these things under a microscope (along with my ego on a shelf) while I identified areas where I could integrate feedback and strengthen my pitch.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
The market opportunity for both immersive training using XR technology as well as the longevity economy.
The impact of the business on healthcare, aging issues, the future of work, and advancing health/education/workforce.
The expertise of our team and our track record being thought leaders in education, XR training, healthcare, and senior care.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
- Launching new training products
- Growing our customer base
- Expanding the team
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Don’t stop and don’t tell yourself “I can’t until…” or “if only I had…”
Get creative on how you can accomplish your goals without the investment.
Put your customers first and listen to them. Build strong relationships with them. Make their voices the fuel of your own company’s mission and vision. Pull in advisors that believe in your vision and mission and will work with you to make connections, give you advice, and get on board with you even before you have the ability to pay them dollars for their market rate. Use information exchange and the value of your business’s impact as a way to get people on board with you early.
Apply for startup competitions (judiciously!) to build a track record of grit and success. Find opportunities that come with cash awards that can be working nondilutive capital to build your product and fuel your business in its earliest growth.
Be patient. Closing this round took me just over a year. Even longer, if you count the pre-seed work we did to get us up and off the ground prior to launching our seed.
Don’t stop and don’t tell yourself “I can’t until…” or “if only I had…”
Get creative on how you can accomplish your goals without the investment.
Where is the best place in LA to watch the sunset?
In all honesty and perhaps spoken like a founder who closed their round 2 weeks ago? From the plane. (I spent 260 hours on American Airlines alone last year!)
